The Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System released its 2025 returns last week, and glass half-full observers would note that the 6 percent net return for infrastructure was higher than real estate (5.1 percent) and private equity (-2.5 percent).
Glass half empty perspectives, though, will see a reduction from the 8.8 percent return of 2024 and below the 10-year average return for the asset class of 9.4 percent.
In its favour, OMERS did note stronger performance in its “regulated and more mature infrastructure platforms”, boosted by regulatory outcomes and refinancing activities.
So why the drag? Performance “was adversely impacted by lower forecast revenue and operational headwinds on select European and renewable energy assets”. OMERS did not expand when contacted on which European or renewables assets, although this is not inclusive of Thames Water, the beleaguered UK water company which OMERS wrote off two years ago.
A challenge, then, for whoever replaces the recently outgoing Alastair Hall as head of European infrastructure.
F2i’s €460m first close for second infra debt fund
Milan-based manager F2i has reached a €460 million first close for the second vintage of its infrastructure credit fund, F2i Infrastructure Credit Fund II (ICF2).
The fund was launched in Q4 2025 with a target of €750 million and a €1 billion hard-cap. The vehicle has so far raised over 90 percent of its predecessor – IDF1 Infrastructure Debt Fund I – which closed on its €500 million target in August 2024.
“Most investors expressed appreciation for a strategy in continuity with the first vintage,” Gianluca Gustani, CIO Debt at F2i, told The Pipeline, “while being improved thanks to a shorter tenor, expanded geographical footprint and enhanced ESG commitment.”
ICF2 provides senior and senior Holdco debt across Europe, the UK and Nordics. It invests across energy transition, digital, social, environment and sustainable mobility sectors.
The Article 8 fund achieved a 75 percent re-up rate from a diverse pool of European investors, underscoring the “continued appetite for infrastructure credit strategies and investors’ confidence in F2i”, noted Gustani.
F2i has over €10 billion in AUM.
NOVA Infrastructure Fund II raises $1bn
NOVA Infrastructure’s mid-market-oriented second vintage has raised more than $990 million to date, according to two SEC filings from February 19.
The North American fund launched in February 2024, and two years later has almost hit its target size of $1 billion. It targets investments in transport, digital, energy and energy transition and waste infrastructure.
NOVA declined to comment.
The Seattle City Employees Retirement System in March 2025 committed $20 million to the fund, according to public documents, which also noted an expected final close in Q3 2025 with a targeted net IRR of 13 to 15 percent.
NOVA Infrastructure Fund I launched in 2019 and closed in 2022 at $565 million after covid-19 caused a downward retargeting from $800 million. It was generating a net IRR of 20.8 percent, as at the end of Q3 2025, according to the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board.
NOVA a star performer, clearly.
Gore Street’s €500m BESS fund anticipates further closes
Trina Storage, a business unit of Shanghai-listed Trinasolar, has agreed to invest an undisclosed amount in Gore Street Capital’s EU fund, which has a target of €500 million and reached a first close in December on €140 million.
“We expect the next close to follow very quickly this year,” Alicja Kowalewska-Montfort, managing director, energy storage, at Gore Street Capital, told The Pipeline. A final close is expected by the end of this year, or early 2027, she added, with total capital raised for the fund now at €200 million.
The fund, whose anchor investors include the European Investment Fund and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, invests exclusively in energy storage projects across the EU.
Asked which countries specifically Gore Street finds particularly attractive, Kowalewska-Montfort clarified that the firm is not excluding any of the EU 27. But, “we’ve been actively looking at Ireland. We’re very comfortable with that market,” she said, noting Gore Street’s exposure through its first fund – the Gore Street Energy Storage Fund, a London-listed vehicle launched in 2018.
Other countries on the firm’s radar include Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Germany. “But there is no limitation”, she reiterated.
Plenty in store, then.
Grapevine
“Old, dumb, weak, and insecure. Not somebody you would want to hang out with”
California Congressman Scott Peters describes the state of the electric grid in unfavourable but unique terms at the ACORE Policy Forum
Who’s hiring
Energy transition manager Quinbrook has appointed Tim Horneman as its new managing director in Australia.
Horneman joins after a short stint as chief commercial officer at Australian energy developer LD Energy. He previously held senior roles at CWP Global, including as director of the Australian Renewable Energy Hub, a proposed 26GW wind, solar and hydrogen development in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Horneman’s hire comes after Quinbrook’s move last year to install former Australian regional head Brian Restall as the firm’s first CEO. At the same time, Quinbrook also appointed Giulia Siccardo as head of its North American operations.
With Keith Gains in the UK, the firm now has a full complement of regional leaders across its three target markets.
Horneman will be based in Brisbane and report to Restall in his new role.
LP watch
Last year saw the highest return to date, at 18.1 percent, since Norway’s Global Pension Fund Global began investing in unlisted renewables in 2021.
It was a dramatic jump from the -9.81 percent loss generated in 2024.
Over the course of 2025, Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the GPFG’s assets, more than tripled the capital committed to the asset class, which at the end of 2025 stood at NKr91.3 billion ($9.6 billion; €8.1 billion), up from NKr25 billion the previous year.
Last year saw GPFG’s first investment in an electricity grid – NBIM invested €4.5 billion for a 21.8 percent stake in TenneT Germany; and a first investment in an energy transition fund – the $1.5 billion committed to Brookfield Global Transition Fund II.
GPFG’s renewables portfolio currently accounts for 0.4 percent of GPFG’s NKr21.3 trillion total AUM, with the upper limit for the asset class set at 2 percent.
In addition to investing directly in wind and solar, NBIM will increase investments in distribution and storage “as opportunities arise”, the pension said in its annual report published last week. “We will gradually increase our investments through indirect structures, such as funds that invest in renewable energy projects.”
GPs, form an orderly queue.
GIC emerges as lead buyer on Meridiam’s CV
Singapore’s GIC has emerged as the lead buyer on Meridiam’s large European infrastructure continuation fund, affiliate title Secondaries Investor reported.
Meridiam had last month raised €2.2 billion for a European infrastructure continuation vehicle, which consists of a portfolio of 22 infrastructure assets that are held by the firm’s legacy funds across 10 European countries, including Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland and France.
The CV attracted almost 70 percent of its capital from new investors, including a diverse pool of European, Asian and US LPs. The balance of commitments came from existing investors who chose to partly or fully roll over their investments.
Clearly, one Asian LP doing its share of the heavy lifting.
From Infrastructure Investor Deals
Northwards returns: Partners Group nets 2.5x MOIC on AtNorth sale
Canadian pension fund CPP Investments and US digital infrastructure group Equinix have made a $4 billion acquisition of Nordic data centre platform AtNorth, netting seller Partners Group a 30 percent return and 2.5x multiple on invested capital.
According to a statement, CPP will pay $1.6 billion for a 60 percent share of the business while Equinix will own about 40 percent. Partners Group has also agreed to re-invest for up to 10 percent, the final amount of which will be decided upon closing.
CPP and Equinix said they have provisionally agreed a financing package of $4.2 billion underwritten by a group of European and Canadian lenders to fund the transaction as well as the capital required to fund the expansion of the business.
AtNorth has an installed and active development pipeline of about 800MW. The portfolio includes eight operational data centres alongside several sites under development across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Partners Group said AtNorth’s contracted EBITDA grew 14x to $200 million since its acquisition in December 2021.
How’s that for value-add?